The present invention relates to a translation apparatus for selecting and displaying a necessary conversational sentence by inferring a user's desires and needs.
In a conventional translation-apparatus, a menu of conversational sentences in a source language which become objects of translation is searched according to a flow chart such as shown in FIG. 9. The menu searching process in this translation apparatus is explained below with reference to FIG. 9.
At step S1, a key is pressed for specifying a situation which seems to cover a conversational sentence to be spoken.
For example, there are listed situations such as "Departure", "In airplane", "Arrival at airport", "Hotels", "Restaurants", "Taxis", "Buses", "Railroad", "Rental cars", "Ships", "Sightseeing/Downtown", "Shopping", "Entertainment", "Sports", "Telephone", "Mail/money exchange", "Diseases", "Trouble", and "Basic conversation".
At step S2, a menu of detailed situations belonging to a specified situation is displayed on the display screen.
For example, the detailed situations belonging to the situation of "In airplane", include "Embarkation", "Takeoff", "In-flight services", "Trouble", "Conversation with other passengers", "Preparation for arrival", etc.
At step S3, a detailed situation which seems to have the conversational sentence to be spoken is selected on the displayed menu.
At step S4, a menu of situation examples belonging to the detailed situation selected at step S3 is displayed on the display screen.
For example, the menu of the situation examples belonging to the detailed situation of "In-flight services", includes "Meals/drinks", "Music", "Magazines/newspapers", "Movies", "Tax-free sales", "Information collection", "Borrowing of equipments", "Learning how to use/Receiving permission", "Others".
At step S5, a situation example which seems to cover the conversational sentence to be spoken is selected from the displayed menu of the situation examples.
At step S6, a first conversational sentence belonging to the situation example selected at step S5 is displayed on the display screen.
At step S7, it is decided whether or not the conversational sentence displayed on the display screen is the target conversational sentence. As a result, if it is the aimed conversational sentence, the menu searching process is ended. On the other hand, if it is not the aimed conversational sentence, the program goes to step S8.
At step S8, another conversational sentence belonging to the situation example selected at step S5 is displayed. Subsequently, the program returns to step S7, where it is decided whether or not the displayed conversational sentence is the aimed conversational sentence. Then, as described above, if it is the aimed conversational sentence, the menu searching process is ended.
In the conventional translation apparatus, however, the hierarchical level is lowered stepwise from "situations" to "detailed situations" and then to "situation examples", at the discretion of the user, whereby the scope of search is gradually narrowed so that an aimed conversational sentence is reached. Accordingly, when the aimed conversational sentence is clear as to which situation and which detailed situation it belongs to, the target conversational sentence can be searched out by a simple operation of only touching the key, without the need of turning pages as with guidebooks or conversational sentence example books. From this point of view, the conventional translation apparatus can be said to be advantageous.
Meanwhile, it is often the case for users less experienced in overseas tours to encounter trouble in manners and custom. Such users often do not know even what to say. In such a case, it would be impossible to search out a necessary conversational sentence with the conventional translation apparatus. Even if a necessary conversational sentence has been found out, it is possible that the user cannot decide whether or not the found conversational sentence is a proper one.
Due to the arrangement that an target conversational sentence is reached by narrowing the scope of search with the hierarchical level gradually lowered, the conventional translation apparatus has a further problem that the number of conversational sentences that can be registered is limited naturally to maintain a certain degree of searching ability.
Furthermore, when there is something more to say after a selected conversational sentence has been spoken, the same searching process as with the preceding conversational sentence must be repeated once again to search out a next conversational sentence even if the next conversational sentence has a relation to the preceding conversational sentence. This is laborious.